


For the Endless Who Has Everything:

by TheLightdancer



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Black Mercy, Desire makes bad decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25741819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: Death and Desire are never shown to get along any better than Desire and Dream do. This is one speculation as to why that might be, reliant on both headcanon and my particular take on Sandman canon.
Relationships: Death of the Endless & Delirium of the Endless, Death of the Endless & Desire of the Endless, Death of the Endless & Destruction of the Endless, Death of the Endless & Dream of the Endless, Death of the Endless/Original Female Characters
Kudos: 1





	For the Endless Who Has Everything:

DEATH'S APARTMENT:

Desire of the Endless had known relief more than most of the Endless when Death had retaken her sigil after she'd left. She had made a very great mess indeed, the impact of her thrown ankh hitting the Source Wall had made a monster that had very briefly rewritten reality to suit its whim, seeking to make her mother love her and admire her work and feeling betrayed when Death had reacted in utter horror and guilt. Then the Parliament and a glimpse of a sister that was....it portended trouble. Their sister had broken, she had broken in front of them and wept and Destruction had not described a figure of strength, merely someone who had felt resentment and even outright hatred and then utter horror and guilt that faded into other emotions.

Desire, like the other Endless, could know some of the things that Destiny knew. What xie did not mention much was that xie did not believe those things were writ in stone. Desire had come to see Death but xir sister had stepped out to further mortar and hammer in elements of the growing Source Wall, her penance even if she was not bound by rules, and even if she had chosen to attend as opposed to skip out on the parliament, it would not have spared her that fate. With that absence, Desire had taken to exploring Death's apartment out of genuine curiosity. There was a room at the end of a hall that was longer than the place indicated (but then the very realms of the Endless were beyond time and space in a truer sense) that had not quite been locked, where the door was ajar.

Several million years later, when Dream was captured by the creatures that he would kill and make the skull of one into what was always, retroactively, his sigil, Delight had gone to Death to ask her to help their brother. Death had stared at her like she was a piece of excrement on her shoe and her words had been cold and harsh and cruel, and yet Delight didn't care. That was her sister being her sister. She'd run down the hall and Death had followed her gaze and reacted in utter terror and horror and followed her but it was too late. Delight had thrown open the door and an image worked into the patterns had repeated itself yet again, as Delight looked on the face of seven Endless in tapestry after tapestry, the woven and delicate memories of bygone ages. 

Delight saw this and grasped it immediately and the deeper truths and that there was no secret and no hidden mystery here. Their sister had outlived the universe not once but thousands of times, for the room was vast and the tapestries were woven in rich detail. And the image of her shocked face was prominent in part of the tapestry she saw and her hands clasped her face as she'd seen and in that agonized scream of so much that overwhelmed her Death took Delight by the hand and held her, rocking her in great wrenching sobs, even as Delirium moved from that and then held her sister again.

Desire was neither Delight nor Delirium, and yet Desire saw the tapestries in turn, and their full expanse, and stepped into the room, awed and horrified and not quite as disturbed as Delight would be in the same sense. Their sister had been very busy, and the sheer expanse was disorienting and Desire did not let xirself see too much of everything. At the center was a single tapestry where all of the Endless were shown in brilliant bright primary colors. An aura of profound ancientness and reverence and sadness hung over the thing and Desire stepped forward, briefly caressing the image of xir sister's face, which was still small and modestly so, over-modest, really.

Desire knew that if xie did not act that the more terrible elements of the future would come true. Destruction would leave, Despair would die, Delight would become Madness, and even that rat bastard Dream would.....

Desire shook xir head. There were ways to prevent this and it all started with preserving their family's unity. If Desire had looked more closely it would have reconsidered xir action and xir hopes might have come true in the truthful sense. The earliest bits of the tapestry showed the very things that followed, Desire concentrating on a plant that held xir essence in the truest sense. The future warlord Mongul would call it a Black Mercy, though to Desire, it was another thing entirely. A thing to give people what their hearts....desired...most.

Smiling at the new plant that clung to xir like a dog and licked xir affectionately, Desire turned to see Death striding in and groaning in a bit of exhaustion, the workman-like clothes of dark black hue changing to her future 20th Century style clothing.

Death froze. _**Desire, what's**_ -then the Mercy leaped outward and Desire smiled at Death with kindness that left Death staring in bemused wonder and the Mercy engulfed her and gripped her.

Desire sat by her on the couch, watching. It would be easier, then. Xie would give xir sister what she most needed, and xie would have Death grateful and fate would go as she shall.

THE MERCY'S DREAMSCAPE:

Death awoke in her own apartment, but different, somehow. Her mentality to it differed, too. Memories roiled in her head that clashed with this, with this sense of novelty but she shook her head. Her nightmares were so strange. Everything that she loved become a thing of weariness? She laughed, alone in her apartment, and then wept. She had retaken her function without pleasure or real will in the matter, and she was outwardly a being of ice and professionalism. That was what mortals, what her family needed. Not the weeping woman who had raged against her brother and the Oan Krona and yelled at them and called them enslavers until she had left Azarath and seen with her own eyes.

Seen the rip her discarded sigil had made in the growing Wall that was built, seen the entity formed by the rift. The thing that called itself her daughter and the 'creator' of a multiverse. It had something of her power and it had tried to bring order and to stave off the destruction of reality but what it had made instead....

Death, like all her siblings, existed outside time and space, and she was fond of culture in mortal terms far more than any of her siblings. There was a film that would come many billions of years down the line, and it would lead to another petty argument between herself and her brother, who disliked that it discarded the mirror and so much else of the tale that it had only a very loose connection. All she liked at this point was a small bit of doggerel she hummed to herself as she hugged Cavendish, relishing this impossible novelty, this sense of uncertainty. The weight of universes weighed on her like Atlas but that was ephemoral and she shrugged it off. She hugged Cavendish, weeping for a time, the memory of what had driven her to that extreme and what she'd built overwhelming her, and then she went to Slim and Wandsworth in a robotic sense and fed them.

The weight of future universes and horrid repetition tried to dog her but she shook her head resolutely and picked up a sigil, a great sword, a claymore larger than anything her seeming size could and should wield, and spoke the words that needed to be spoken.

_**Brother Destruction, I hold your sigil and I stand in my gallery. Would you speak to me?** _

In a shimmering element of distortion like a mirage, Destruction materialized. The false-memories and false-futures weighed on her and she chose to do what her heart wanted to do, not what the mask she was trying to don and keep said to do.

She started with a hug that suited her heart, not the icy professionalism, and let herself weep with the sense of the burden and the hatred of mortals and Destruction, as was his wont and his nature, simply held her and whispered soft words in her ear. She was held to be the one that held the family together but in truth it wasn't quite so. He did. Destruction, and here again the false future led her to cling to him more tightly, as he kissed her brow, and led her to her own couch.

He sat back, relaxing.   
  
_Okay sis, what's the matter?_

She sniffled.

The hard and cold and professional her that was detached would have cursed her weakness, cursed him, and clammed up until he left. The her that got her heart's desire spoke and spoke calmly, and told him that which he had wondered. Told him of the Demon's arrogance and of what those hands had done and tried to do, and the word that had begun to be spoken. A dawning horror registered on his face though she did not look to see it, then sorrow, and then a boiling rage that she did look up and see and the brief flash of a creature with four eyes overwhelmed her and she scrambled backward and her brother saw this and his rage cooled. He merely held her and she cried anew, letting that and the stress of being hated for what she did by mortals overwhelm her until she was calm.

Her brother, her wonderful brother, kissed her on the forehead again and quietly called a conclave of the Endless minus their sister, one of which Death knew nothing. The truths that she had wanted to tell and never brought herself to do in the strange futures around her, and her family reacted in mute horror, and in this, her family knew the truth and decided not on the mixture of anger and bravado and dissension part of her had feared but in greater closeness.

Death's stoic ice endured all the same even then, but over time it thawed, Delight staying Delight and listening to her when she sought to keep her from a room for a reason she could not understand.

Time lapsed, and her family was bound by Rules and accordingly mortals would suffer for them where Desire and Despair and even Dream would draw closer to them. It was the way of the world, especially for mortals, but through it all, the ties that bound the Endless together would grow stronger, and they knew intimately each element to help each other. With each set of millions of years that followed, the ice that covered Death's persona slowly and measurably thawed and her warmth became more real, and mortals, well, she could not make them love her but she did not need to, for she loved them and began to give them a friend and someone to make the pain and the fear of the transition between states that much more visible.

The first moment that made her question things was when Delight came to see her and was a wondrous company and decided to run into her halls to have her sister chase her and she'd shouted for her not to go to a particular room. Delight refused to listen and blew a raspberry and a spike of painful and total fear ran through Death as she ran after her sister in desperation that she could not place, for the overlapping elements did not quite fit. Then Delight held open a room and gasped in awe.

_This is beautiful, sis!_

And Death froze. A single tapestry that covered a small room and showed her family in wonder and yet-

A second flash of a room much broader and deeper and covered in slightly over ten thousand tapestries with that tapestry old and ancient and made with powerful magic and Delight holding her head and screaming and her simultaneously holding her sister's past state and bawling her eyes out and taking Delirium's hand with a sense of hollowness and defeat-Delight was awed at the tapestry and her sense of her-ness pervaded in it and the room. 

Yet that second image didn't quite fade and her apartment seemed to crack for a moment and she saw her hand push through the crack and out and looked puzzled. She shook her head. That couldn't quite-

Never mind.

The second moment came another few million years later, as her persona continued to thaw around families and a little girl, of a species that later generations would call Coluans, stood and glared at her with wrath and spoke to her in a bitter harshness.

_And how would you like it if someone spoke to you like this?_

Reality cracked again and she saw herself looking at her with icy disdain and an aristocratic sneer on her lips, weary with the same element and yet damned to parrot it in infinity:

_**I would like it just fine. You and your kind need a firm hand and a distant voice.** _

She saw the cracks and then for the first time noticed the skies, which were black, and were those....

_**Tendrils? Huh? I know this....vision...this is not how the skies....** _

Her hand again went through the crack and felt a Nothingness that chilled her and she pulled out and then tried to stick her head through it and saw a vast Void like blood that boiled around and stared in bemusement.

**_Huh? The Bleed? How in the Hell?_ **

She drew back.

The little girl was looking at her impatiently, and then a sudden moment of dawning horror hit her and the little girl looked at her with confusion and that better damned well not be compassion, she was a fucking Endless and mortals didn't get a vo-

She blinked, shook her head, knelt by the little girl, and then placed her hands on her broken body, and when the damage restored itself, the girl looked at her.

_Huh?_

And then her soul was back in it and she awoke from a dream and heard a voice that made her shiver like a wind through a cemetery.

_**Is this real? Where am I?** _

Death returned to her apartment which seemed fresh as usual, hyperventilating slightly. This was.....this was too perfect, her heart's desire coming true far too reliably, and with those strange hints of.....of something....

With trepidation she strode to her window and looked outside on the place within every world inhabited by sapient life and all the skies were filled with black smoke and tendrils.

 _ **No, n-n-n-no. No. This is real.** _Tears flowed down her eyes. **_This is real. This has to be real. I'm not going to live beyond the universe, I'm going to die when life dies and be free. My family loves each other and works together and lives like....like a family._**

She held her head and screamed in a silent scream of agony and the sensations vanished and she shook her head, smiling.

DEATH'S APARTMENT:

Desire stared at xir sister levelly. Her arms were twitching slightly and her tears flowed down her face. Tears of joy, no doubt.

THE MERCY'S VISION:

Then it happened, the thing that wrenched Death most and drew the line that would be unforgivable.

She had met someone working on the Source Wall, a being of perfect power and perfect beauty, with eyes that shone like light. Not Kilalla of the Glow, for the Oans had not yet fully awoken. One of the Elder Ones that was forgotten and none but the Endless remembered them and their names in the age of Kal-El of Krypton. She had fallen deeply in love, for she was a being of such beauty that it made her heart ache and the ice melt. It had been sudden and unlike her, for while she was not averse to the elements of Desire's realm and her focus was predominantly to other women (though very occasionally to a man) something like this did not fit. Still moreso when the person knew who she was and what she had done and did not care.

The being was one of the primordial protogenoi of a realm beyond realms, and the closest analogy to later eras was that of fire but it was not in truth fire or magma, it was Light, a pure and unchanged Light that made her heart glow.

She held that person ferociously, kissed them, and let herself go enjoying the sense of love with such depth that she understood immediately why Dream let himself do this. She'd danced and laughed and loved, and the memories and the weight of her burdens lifted and she felt light. And reality fractured again when she held a firstborn child, sired by her lover by a magick of Death's own doing for she who was life could be the most prolific of the Endless had she desire to be (and in the sense that her breath of life brought forth all else once she came into being...) and she looked at that being with shining eyes of fire and skin like fire with such love and tenderness.

Reality fractured and she saw the image of herself seeing and sensing the touch of Delight when she had felt that growth within her and knew immediately that her love had only had the touch of Desire and there was nothing but that and she felt sickened and betrayed and horrified at her own actions. And her love, what's worse, had not cared and simply viewed it as a blessing but Death's fragile self had shattered so much further that she felt....her eyes closed and the horrid thought vanished, holding her alive and well child who grew.

Yeneli, she called her, Dawn, in keeping with the theme of her family's name, and she loved her tenderly and her love with her.

Her love was given an exemption from her function, from aging, and she became as one of the family in a way that none save the brief marriages of Destiny would. Doubt still gnawed at her, insisted that this was too perfect but she murmured:

_**Conceal, don't feel, don't let it show.** _

And it vanished, and all was right. Yeneli grew up immortal and beautiful and Death was content that she who so often only held life to take it was free to hold life to give it, to have nourished it, to have known all else with her.Her contentment grew the greater and she lost the brittle hardness and the concealing of that weakness and aching self-hatred and the mirror of mortal gaze in her love and in her family.

She taught Yeneli the old songs and Time and Night let her return and hugged her and apologized for the fear of her after meeting her granddaughter and telling her that none who could produce something so lovely need know neither shame nor doubt nor exile from her own kin for the shame of what she was and how she was, and in the ways that she was.

And Death wept freely, feeling welcome, and let herself cry for joy and for sorrow, her hands intertwined with her love.

Two more beautiful daughters were born after Yeneli, and Dawn, Twilight, and Starshine were those she loved most after her own love, for they were proof that she was not doomed to be a lesser mirror of her brother Destruction, only a thing of ending.

She wove her tapestry not hidden when alone but openly and her family were amazed at its beauty.

Death was joyful and she was grateful, for here was her heart laid bare. Loved and understood, not feared for what she could do. Not lonely and weighed down by endless guilt and sorrow, 

And yet the clouds over all the worlds were dark and gritty, and strands of sorrow began to interweave themselves again. Her love finally wearied of eternal life and came to her on knees and kissed her sweetly and begged to be given the release of her embrace and the sound of her wings.

Death stood indecisive, for a moment, her vision swimming, and yet she knew that love, in the end, is the ability to let go as well as to hold on and in sorrow she held her wife and felt her pass on into the Sunless lands. To her surprise her kids did not hate her, for they were bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, and they understood more than most the elements within her.

And without her love the brittle ice came back, for life was lonely and it was grey.

And it was immeasurably long.

And then in a time that even to the Endless was a noticeable gap between epochs, her old friend from when she had left her Function asserted herself and called to a woman who resembled her, hair the same platinum hue and they went to her wondrous realm between the worlds and founded Azarath, and performed a ritual of great power and great evil. The old monster that had sought to harm her and had endured as a shapeless thing commanding its realm reformed instantly, and the demon Trigon laughed in the joy and the totality of his triumph and his rebirth.

He remembered her all too well and he built a great ankh from the bones of the first world he massacred and spoke arcane words, including her own true-name, and obeying that terrible power she materialized before him.

 ** _Hello, dear_** , he purred in concentrated malice.

Her face was marked by a smile and yet inwardly she was screaming and thrashing within her mind, aching to leave that place, and yet she smiled and found herself in need of sating that which her true love had awakened, an impulse the Demon understood all too well.

 _ **Little Death,** _he purred with savage contentment, **_come to me and let us know each other...._** and to her utter horror in and out of universe that aching hole in her heart would welcome any who could fill it, and they knew each other indeed. She chose this but he was brutal and soon she had her last child and her Fourth, the Daughter of Darkness, whose eyes of indigo concealed a heart of nightmares. She wielded a great ebon sword and went forth conquering and to conquer, the might of the Endless merged with the Demon.

Yet her first love's light would not be quenched in the legacy of the darkness and her children were soon opposed to each other as she watched in a passive sense, an aching hollowness filling her at the thought of what she'd done and the sight of one empowered with her own nature wreaking such terror across existence.

She heard her mother's fears and her father's statements and they echoed and echoed and echoed in her head and she held her head on her knees in her apartment and wailed, and then slunk to the floor and curled up for a time.

And then she awoke, determined, and set out to find her daughter.

She stood in the ruins of a world called Earth, the pyramid of skulls raised from its inhabitants, beasts and sapient alike reaching the scale of a small mountain, her sword drunk on the blood that it had shed. She laughed and in that laughter was a mockery of her own name and her own function, a being with a sword of blood and horror that looked at her.

**_Behold, mother, what I have wrought! Am I not the daughter of Death, and of Hell? I have ridden in on a pale horse as Hell followed with me and all existence trembles from my inexorable power! This is what love gives you mother, a daughter worthy of your true function, not the weak and insipid creatures of Life!_ **

Death glared at her.

_**I am life as well as death, you cannot have one without the other.** _

_**Your words and your weakness**_ , hissed the Daughter of Darkness. **_My father has slain the world that hubs the multiverse and we are going to Oa and this universe shall drown, mother, oh how it shall drown in blood, blood, and your power unleashed!_**

Death looked at her in sorrow.

_**My blood does not make you a murderer!** _

**_No,_** she pointed to her father ** _. His does._**

Her grin was malice and her siblings arrived then, too, clad in armor of light as she was of darkness and they sought to defend their mother.

**_You are weak, mother, you have always been. Yours is the power to do this. You took these souls, did you not know that I slew them?_ **

Death's glare became a broken-eyed stare of shame.

 _ **Yes, I knew**_ , she whispered. **_And I was ashamed. Your grandmother was right. This is all that I am, and that I was misnamed. My brother is not Destruction, he is Definition. I am Destruction, and all I touch is ashes and decay._**

She knelt before the pyramids and wept and felt very small indeed. Her daughter's haze of demonic power and majesty faded and she realized what she stood upon and looked to her father and her mother and then in indecision as Death's eyes flashed up and she screamed the same denial that her father did but for near opposite reasons and sought to move, the blade slammed into her gut and her daughter saw her with the fullness of her nature as Death, with a great pair of raven-dark wings which glimmered with an inner light.

**_Is that all I get?_ **

**_You got what anyone else gets_** , Death spoke brokenly. ** _A lifetime, no more and no less._**

The moment faded and she was holding her daughter's broken body and wailing for yet another loss and the skies of shadows and tendrils seemed to pulse in pleasure, and she looked at her fallen child who of them all most resembled her and whose eyes stared in emptiness and would never, ever see anything again.

I'm sorry, she spoke, to her child and to her children, as the blood of the massacre stained her daughter and her. This.....this isn't real, and it never was.

DEATH'S APARTMENT:

Desire sat up with more rapt attention, Death was twitching now, xir new plant had its grip removed from her with wrenching gasps.

THE MERCY'S VISION:

The vision faded and her child vanished and so did her apartment and the tapestry-room began to fill again and a loud and agonized wail echoed in the backdrop as she felt a sensation like tearing off her own arm.

DEATH'S APARTMENT:

The Mercy was thrown off of her and it was hurled against a cabinet, where the protective power of its Creator restrained it from being taken into the power of Death's hand. Desire wondered how xir gift would be received and then Desire watched with horrified eyes as Death bent over and wailed with an agonized scream that was something that hit Desire, finally, that xir plan had gone very very horribly wrong. Death wailed and then staggered up, shuddering, and went to that room and realized the door was open and saw the tapestries and fell to her knees again and wailed with that same sense of sorrow and Desire, hesitantly, stood up and went to xir sister, and knelt beside her, placing xir hand gently toward her shoulder, a few hands touching her until the wails stopped.

It took Desire a few seconds too long to realize that the shocked silence was replaced by a deep growling and then in a sudden display of her own strength Death had her against her closet wall, held by one arm against her throat.

_**What.....did....you....do....to...me?** _

_A gift, sister. It was meant to be a gift. Show you your heart's desire._

You showed me my first family, you showed me her, the one you manipulated, and you showed me h-her rage had built to a point that her form had shifted and grown in height to dwarf that of Desire, and eyes that were ordinarily dark as night glowed like suns, and that sense of anger and hatred built to a point that Desire knew that the only thing protecting xir would be if Death decided to abide by the rules that bound the rest of the family. For a very long moment Desire was held by the throat by a warlike shape that Death assumed seldom, and xie knew as Death twitched and her fingers clenched and her breathing was carnosaur-heavy and low that xie could not afford anything that could even slightly goad xir sister. 

Finally Death dropped Desire to the floor and shrank back to her more default shape.

 _ **Get out**_ , she hissed.

_Sister, I was only trying to h-_

**_GET OUT!_ **

And with that Desire did leave, stooping to grab the Mercy, fearful of what would ensue, and Death raged and screamed and went to another hidden room where she raged and wailed and let the emotions out for a time, before stepping out slowly, and hesitantly, and then curled up on her couch and did nothing at all for a time, until her very function began to tremble again. The skull-sigil gleamed and she heard Dream's voice and she put her hands over her ears and closed them off and tried to ignore it.

Figuring all he wanted was just to have her doing her damned function she focused on ensuring the Sunless Realms remained as they should be, and avoided her family for a very, very long lapse. They held a conclave and she attended but the hostility in her gaze to the rest of them endured and she did not stay long, responding to Dream's attempts to soothe her with a glare that made him sit down and remain silent and only Destruction was able even partially to broach the ice, and she threw off his hands too, and bellowed in anger at him before leaving.

She remained avoiding them for that long span and never saw or spoke to them for that duration after that conclave.

And then one day Delight came to her house, to try to cheer her up, and began to run into her halls toward a room that was unlocked that day, Death weaving her tapestries with the secret knowledge and amidst her own sorrows, and Death sprang up and ran to chase Delight, telling her that she shouldn't-

She arrived too late, Delirium screamed at the sight and she felt that hollow brittleness within her increase and turned away from Del for one of the few times that she would, curling on her couch and staring into space. The first thing that the newly minted Delirium of the Endless did was cuddle with her older sister until her sister's brittleness dissolved some, humming and summoning elements and shapes of her own make to try to work within her sorrows, and never did Delirium quite understand why it was that she was so hesitant to go near the realm of Death or her apartment, and in point of fact could and did visit anywhere in the realms of the other Endless save there.


End file.
